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About Máiréad Enright

Máiréad Enright lectures at Kent Law School. She is also a PhD candidate in the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, University College Cork. Her research interests are in gender and the law, law and religion, citizenship and the political dimensions of private law. You can contact her at M.Enright[at]kent.ac.uk or (+44) 1227 827996.

Posts by Máiréad Enright:

I do not accept the Deputy’s comment that the Government is neither sympathetic nor decent in respect of the work it does here. As pointed out with regard to the Magdalen laundries, Priory Hall and many other sensitive serious issues the Government has been sympathetic and decent. Enda Kenny, May 2014. Redress is in the news again. The(…)

The High Court handed down judgment in PP v. HSE today. The Irish Times provides a useful summary here. P., who was 15 weeks pregnant, died on December 3rd, but her body was subjected to medical processes to ‘facilitate the continuation of maternal organ supportive measures in an attempt to attain foetal viability’ for several more weeks. We(…)

#AbortionPillTrain Film from Whackala on Vimeo. Tomorrow, Clare Daly’s Bill to Repeal the Eighth Amendment will be debated in the Dail. A rally to support the Bill will begin outside the Dail at 7pm. Daly’s Bill is interesting because it proposes replacing the 8th Amendment with a new provision which would provide explicit protection for(…)

The closing date for applications to the symphysiotomy redress scheme is this Friday. Assessment has already begun, some redress offers – a very small fraction of the total projected value of the scheme – have already been made and a very small number of those have been accepted. I have written before about the core(…)

Earlier this week, a small number of women and men re-staged the ‘Contraceptive Train’ of 1971 as an ‘Abortion Pill Train’. A group organised by ROSA, Re(al)-Productive Health, Action for Choice and the Socialist Party travelled to Belfast, where they collected pills ordered from Women on Web and delivered to friends’ addresses in the North. On return to(…)

Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A. is a direct action performance and protest group based in London, established to raise awareness of the Irish and Northern Irish abortion laws, which effectively require women to travel to England to terminate pregnancies in almost all circumstances. I.M.E.L.D.A. is an acronym, which stands for ‘Ireland Making England the Legal Destination for(…)

Survivors of Symphysiotomy are holding a demonstration outside Government Buildings on Thursday September 11th from 11-12.30. Many members of Survivors of Symphysiotomy are going, but many others are in poor health, and cannot attend. If you can go along, even for a short while, please do. Women are asked to carry a brightly coloured high(…)

This piece is partially cross-posted from Critical Legal Thinking. Those not familiar with the facts of the case as reported by Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland can find a full account of those, and of the basic law behind this case there. In a sense I cannot add to, or improve upon, William Wall’s elegant reflection on(…)

Update: I have added notes to this post to take account of what has been published elsewhere since the Independent report quoted below. Reporting of the case has been patchy, and sometimes confused. See RTE.ie, the Sunday Independent (quoting this piece), the Sunday Times and the Examiner. Dearbhail McDonald of the Irish Independent reported on Saturday on what she(…)

Tuesday was the second, and most eventful, day of the Irish state’s examination before the ICCPR . I have made a Storify of my tweets and some others from Geneva, which is embedded at the bottom of this post, and includes some video from the examination. Symphysiotomy in Geneva and Mother and Baby Homes in Dublin. I want to dwell,(…)